The last time pianist Nick Sanders played New Orleans Jazz Fest, the year was 2005 and he was appearing under the auspices of
the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, which has spawned and
nurtured so many talents in genre after genre.

On the second Saturday of this year's fest, Sanders
and the New York-based musicians that make up the Nick Sanders Trio had the
Jazz Tent stage all to themselves. Their set was an acknowledgement of how far
Sanders has progressed as a composer, arranger and performer. He is progressive
in the best sense of the adjective -- seemingly incapable of a hackneyed gesture
or a squandered phrase.

This outing, with drummer Connor Baker and bassist
Henry Fraser in mutually intuitive fettle, impressed with its efficiency of
artistic purpose. Some Jazz Fest sets are more like Chat Fests. Not here.
Indeed, apart from introducing his colleagues, a nod to composer Anthony
Braxton and a couple of welcome-to-Jazz-Fest bon-bons, Sanders was conspicuous
by avoiding words in favor of music.

Nick Sanders plays on stage in the Zatarian's WWOZ Jazz tent with his Nick Sanders Trio at the New Orleans Jazz Fest in New Orleans on Saturday, May 3, 2014.Chris Granger, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune

His playing -- technically masterful, interpretively
inquisitive -- impressed with its articulate rigor. Sanders has a classicist's
respect for structural clarity, and his harmonic language, plus an appealing rhythmic
spikiness, summoned up images of personalities far removed from the Fair
Grounds zeitgeist. If Serge Prokofiev was ever reincarnated and invited to play
in the Jazz Tent, the emerging soundscape might well have linked itself to
Sanders' own expressive temperament.

The precise, ever-responsive contributions from
Fraser and Baker reflected an exchange of ideas in which each player nourished
the other, listening as much as attacking. By the time the Trio reached its de
facto encore, a propulsive, glistening arrangement of Duke Ellington's "It Don't
Mean a Thing," the set's pleasures had been abundantly confirmed.